The Last Match's best lines

There's more to the book than the clever use of italics I wrote about yesterday. There are lots of funny lines, too, even the ones in plain old Roman type. Here are two of my favorites:

"Petruzzi was the kind of industrialist who let other people be industrious for him."

and this, an exchange between the swindler/protagonist and a Côte d'Azur casino owner:

"He said, `Well, once I bluffed four kings in a poker game. Is that a dramatic highlight?'

"`Yes, sir,' I said. `It certainly is. But I wouldn't call four kings exactly a bluffing hand.'

"`No, no. Four real kings, all at one of my tables. Belgium, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden.'"

The Last Match is an episodic, globe-hopping novel, and some of the episodes are more compelling than others. The book's peripatetic narrative reflects the author's peripatetic life, about which you can read here, on one of the better author Web sites I've seen. (Dodge is also the author of the more focused Plunder of the Sun, published, like The Last Match, by Hard Case Crime, and To Catch a Thief, as well as numerous other novels and travel books.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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David Dodge

The Last Match by David Dodge

If there's an award for best use of italics in a thriller, I nominate this book, by the author of Plunder of the Sun and To Catch a Thief. Here's an example:

"M. l'Inspecteur would indeed, unhesitatingly and unequivocally. He would further personally guarantee, on his parole d'honneur, that M. le Marquis would receive not only a fifty percent return on his money but the Legion d'Honneur; not the mere ribbon of a lousy Chevalier, either, but the médaille of a full Officier. Perhaps, even -- through this, regrettably, M. l'Inspecteur could not personally guarantee -- perhaps even the baton of a Maréschal! With a public kiss of gratitude from M. le Président de la République! Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité and cost-plus patriotism, with the elegant chords of La Marseillaise thundering in the background.

"`The boob will be wetting his pants with eagerness before we finish,' Bernard said."

That's rather nice, I think, as is this, from the same narrator/con artist: "I was long gone when the pot aux roses was découvert, as the French newspapers had it."

Sure, italic type is a convention to indicate foreign words, but Dodge makes it a wink from narrator to reader, a reminder of his blithe American con artist's amusement at the scams he pulls among rich and greedy habitués of the French Riviera. (He also makes it as lively a lesson in French as non-French-speaking readers are likely to get from any novel in English.)

And there is subtlety to Dodge's use of the device. He employs it not at all in the narrator/protagonist's opening confrontation with a jealous husband, sparingly in scenes between the narrator and an older, rich woman to whom he is an oddly good-hearted gigolo, and just occasionally when our hero meets up with the novel's femme fatale -- or should that be femme fatale? It is only once the scams are in full swing that the vocabulary becomes peppered with French words and the pages with italic type.

I find myself smiling when I see the italics, because I know something is up.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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David Dodge

Plunder of the Sun

I post this because Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge is a fine, exciting novel, but also as a reminder to myself not to get persnickety about categories. It's not a detective story (or, at least, its protagonist is not a detective), but it is a crime story and a heck of an adventure story. It's the tale of two men and their quest for Inca treasure in the mountains of Peru, so its location qualifies it for this site. It integrates Inca history into the storyline with ease and grace, so you'll learn something and have fun doing so.

Hitchcock turned Dodge's novel To Catch a Thief into the movie of the name. He should have filmed this, too, or if not Hitchcock, maybe Kurosawa.

© Peter Rozovsky 2006

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David Dodge